Photovoice Stories of Water and Energy Exhibition

On 12 March 2026, UWC’s Politics and Urban Governance (PUG) Research Group hosted the Photovoice Stories of Water and Energy exhibition at Isivivana Centre in Khayelitsha. The exhibition formed part of PUG’s Governing the Just Urban Transition (GoJUT) research project and showcased photographs and stories from small business owners navigating ongoing water and energy challenges.

The exhibition featured images from 16 small business owners, with three participants presenting their photographs and personal stories to an audience of policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and community representatives. The photographs captured the everyday realities of running businesses under conditions of unreliable infrastructure, highlighting both vulnerability and innovation.

The event was opened by the Vice-Chancellor of UWC, Prof Robert Balfour, and concluded with reflections from the Executive Mayor of the City of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis. A stakeholder panel included the City’s Director of Informal Settlements and a representative from the United Khayelitsha Informal Traders Association (UKITA), enabled direct engagement between business owners and decision-makers. City officials responded to the presentations, reflecting on what the stories reveal about service delivery, governance, and inclusion in the context of urban sustainability transitions.

The exhibition forms part of the GoJUT project, funded by the National Research Foundation, which examines how South Africa’s just urban transition is unfolding in practice. The project focuses on how small businesses in low-income areas of Alexandra in Johannesburg and Khayelitsha in Cape Town cope with persistent water and energy crises. By studying these everyday strategies, the project aims to identify opportunities for more inclusive and collaborative governance pathways towards sustainable and socially just urban futures.

Photovoice, the participatory method used in the project, enables participants to document and interpret their own experiences through photography. Participants took photographs representing how they access or struggle to access water and energy, selected images to caption, and shared their stories through interviews and group discussions. In doing so, they actively shaped the research process and contributed to sharing its findings beyond academia.

The images and stories from 16 participants in Khayelitsha have also been compiled into a photo essay that documents their experiences of accessing water and energy.

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